Nearly two weeks after being shot seven times outside his San Francisco store, Martin Olive, the owner of Vapor Room, is recovering with the support of his family, friends, and local community.
Olive, who was taking a break outside the dispensary on 9th Street, was approached and shot multiple times at point-blank range by a man later identified as 34-year-old Chaesarak Chong. In an interview with CBS News Bay Area, Olive recounted the terrifying incident.
“I had two bullets graze my cheeks, one went up and hit the top of my hair. The other went down and split my earlobe,” Olive said. “Four hours of stitches on my cheek, my salivating gland was punctured.”
Surveillance footage from a San Francisco police town hall showed Chong on a motorbike approaching Olive and pulling out a gun.
Olive initially thought it was a prank but quickly realised the seriousness of the situation.
“He starts pulling up a gun and pointing at me. I initially thought it was like a water gun or a TikTok prank, but then I saw the seriousness in his eyes.
He was very deliberate and very much wanting to shoot me,” Olive explained.
The gunfire left Olive with several injuries, including facial paralysis, cracked ribs, a fractured shoulder blade, and a pierced lung that required a chest tube for about a week.
Following the shooting, Chong retreated to his apartment located above the dispensary. Police attempted to negotiate with him for two hours, but when he shot at officers three times, they returned fire. Chong was later found dead inside his apartment.
Olive, who did not recognize the shooter, speculated that Chong may have been planning a larger attack. “My own working theory is that he was planning something bigger and was just sort of like, ‘If I can just get one person, I can get more,'” Olive said.
Despite the trauma, Olive’s recovery has been supported by his staff and the broader community. Rose Harless, the store manager at Vapor Room, expressed gratitude for the outpouring of support.
“It’s amazing to see him make such a quick bounce back from something so horrific,” Harless said. “It has been really nice to have this day with the community and to receive the response and just the good wishes. And the message that if and when we come back, they will support Vapor Room no matter where we are.”
In the wake of the shooting, Olive decided to temporarily close Vapor Room while he focuses on healing.
“I wanted to close out the memories of this place with positive memories, with community and all the fun we had, instead of having final memories of five seconds of the worst time of my life,” Olive shared.
Although there are still many questions about the future of the dispensary, Olive is taking the necessary time to recover physically and emotionally from the traumatic incident.
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